Our Chicago corespondent Ryan Christian recently discovered her work at Kavi Gupta during the show "The Vaguely Paperly".
Dana Dart-McLean lives and works in Portland, OR and has shown her work at Small A Projects (New York), Laura Bartlett Gallery (London), Nicolai Wallner (Copenhagen), Wrong Gallery (New York). Our Chicago corespondent Ryan Christian recently discovered her work at Kavi Gupta during the show "The Vaguely Paperly".

Dana Dart-McLean

So, I saw your work for the first time recently, @the Vaguely Paperly show here in Chicago. I
was immediately drawn to them for a few reasons, but the prime reason being that in "As Moving
Mental Blocks" has the word "asmoving" right down the side, that fucking baffled me (in the
good sort of way), as did the monstrous gauge of your signature which is far less important.

Anyhow, let's start by talking a bit about your text elements. They're mysterious. They force the
viewer to investigate your image further since there is no immediate, obvious connection. There is
also the way of linking the words together via their first/last letters that forms this sort of word
play or line of association. Or these vague messages like "I Am Okay". Mysterious. Can you tell
us about the text components to your work?

I'm into using text for several reasons. Sometimes, I bring in text because the uniformity and
clarity of language seems funny combined with the obscure style of my visual rendering. A lot of
drawing for me is about the process of failing to accurately render. In words "a" is always "a,"
but pictorially what is dice and what is moon? The clarity of the language form is easier to cross-
reference.

Text flattens and sits on the surface of paintings, making everything else appear behind it. I
wonder if that is a pervasive relationship between language and experience. I know I am
constantly being tripped up by trying to follow written instructions despite their imperfect
accuracy. Just yesterday I was in a bathroom in a bar and there was a sign on the inside of the
door that said, "Turn up for Lock. Turn down for Unlock. " The lock was just a button on the
doorknob and could only be pushed in. I stared at it for a long time trying to reconcile the words
with the visual.

In "As Moving Mental Blocks Beautiful Possible," I tried to frame the picture with words that
both are and contradict a picture. Removing spaces between words or forcing words around
corners shows the words divorced from meaning but as a visual element. Signatures are tricky. I
ended up painting over those big signatures.

I like the idea of you taking on the role of "false interior designer". This is an interesting idea,
to make work from the vantage point of an unreal character or something your are not. It also
seems funny to me that in a world you completely control, you have decided to assume a role
that is pretty uncommon for people to fantasize about. Like using wish on something totally
obtainable. (not trying to sound condescending or anything. . . i draw fake bands that i wish i was
in)

I also wonder, how does this role change your approach to a piece? Do you have rules for
yourself that you normally wouldn't or a different way of thinking about spaces?

Curious about those fake band drawings... Not sure exactly why I am drawn to taking on a role
like false interior designer. In my fetishizing of the role, an interior designer clarifies how we
mediate private and public space by deciding what is right for a private space now. Decisions
like, "Where should this vase go?" symbolize contemporary aesthetics scaled to comfort or
convention, talking about class and taste but also about domestic life and love (as motives for
materializing comfort). I painted the first interior designer piece in 2003; a small painting
showing the lobby of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The levels of
concentrated effort and decision that went into making that reactor (and it's famous
malfunction) seemed interesting made into a metaphor about object placement, a picture of a
lobby with bouquets and paintings. I wanted to look at uses of energy, on the chemical level of
nuclear reaction to create electricity, a political level dealing with the debate on nuclear armament
and nuclear power, the social level of energy of lives devoted to occupations and dividing
personal and professional spaces, and my own energy as a younger person, thinking about
assuming a role of "artist. " I wonder if much of that comes across in the painting.

Memory is another important element of you work. You mention that the works are an
extension of memory syntax study, with you as the model (like a abstract visualization of signs
accrued by your own memory? is that right?). Could you elaborate on that some?

My relationship to memory in my work is developing slowly. One reason I'm interested in
memory is the psychological narrative of emotion draining from events as time passes. Like
something profoundly emotional or traumatic becoming normalized in memory over time. What is
left? Imagery and association, clues that add to a picture or story but with parts left out or new
parts added. That sounds like a not very sexy description of surrealism. I do love Magritte.

How do approach a blank surface? Where does your palette come from? How would you
describe your drawing style? Where did it come from?

I start with source imagery or phrases. When I'm working, I look at source images and try to
record the experience of looking at source material, maybe as an exercise in trying to generate an
emotional memory. Blank surfaces are very pleasing. I always try to work back to how nice the
blank surface was, with mixed results. My palette is all over the place. I really need to get it
under control. I use a lot of blue because the medieval illuminated manuscript artists did. My
drawing style is intimate and poor. I've never been very good at drawing so my drawings are
about following that into something that might be good, using the activity as a way of seeing.
Looking for lines.

Can you tell me about your recent medium shift? You are starting to paint. What is prompting
this change? How do you think oils will effect/enhance these ideas you are working with?

Yes, I am starting to paint with oils. The diagrammatic and illustrative qualities in my work are
well suited to more flat painting mediums and drawings but there is something I'd like to get
across that requires a heavier medium. Oil paint on canvas has a specific history and body that
make it heavy-- enables a more aggressive intimacy. I'm starting a series of oil paintings about
screen depththe illusion of depth images convey on TV, movie, and computer screen.

What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? What is giving you inspiration to
create? (Books music art people places food anything?)

Too many things! Artists who live in Portland like Storm Tharp, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Susan
Ploetz, Chris Johanson, and Jo Jackson. My boyfriend's band, Dragging an Ox through Water,
practicing next door. The way he combines song and noise gives me ideas about figuration and
abstraction. I am working on several paintings illustrating a book my friend, Ashby Collinson
wrote. It's sort of a color theory narrative in list form. She wrote it in response to some collages I
made, so the collaborative process has been fun and interesting. Publication Studio, a non-
demand publishing venture that also hosts events to support a growing conversation between
books and their readers, prints the book. I'm participating in Ashby's business endeavor,
Interested Party. I'm fabricating some paper dumb bells for her.

Say if it was like 100 years from now, and you are an art historian, how would you classify
your work? What movement were you a part of?

New Wave of Northwest Hardcore

Where do you want you work to go? Do you have an idea or visualization of what kinds of
things of want to be doing or making down the road?

I'm working on that series of oil paintings and I'm going to keep making works on paper. I want
to work with names. I made a painting on paper with the name, "Calvin. " Maybe through names
I can figure out signatures as arbitrators of authenticity. I like using names as a fan's
invocationdistancing and drawing near.

Any exciting endeavors in the near future? (Art wise or other?)

Moving into a new studio and going to the Oregon coast for a day.

Do you have a really good story to share? Something crazy you saw? A strange experience?

Alright this story doesn't beat a demon sighting but maybe is interesting? So, 2 years ago I was
out singing karaoke with some friends. My friend Megan put in "when I see you smile," by Bad
English. Before she went on stage to sing, she told me that whenever she karaokes this song
disastrous things happen. Last time she sang it a guy had a heart attack in the bar and had to be
rushed to the hospital. The time before a huge bar fight broke out in the middle of the song. So
she sang the song -- very theatrical and great. Later, my boyfriend, Brian, and I went home and
about an hour after we fell asleep we were shocked awake by a huge crash. We rushed out side
and the entire street is illuminated by red and blue cop lights and there are like 7 cop cars and 20
cops surrounding this dude in the middle of the street. He's lying on his face in the middle of the
road and they all have their guns pointed at him. One of them comes over to us and is like, get
the hell out of here. We're like what's going on here? The cop tells us the man lying in the middle
of the road led the cops on a drunken 40 block car chase until they finally bumped his car into a
parked car in front of our house. The parked car they bumped the drunk into is Brian's car and
it's completely totaled. No one was hurt and nothing was damaged except for his car. He got the
city to reimburse him but it took like 6 months. When I told Megan about it she was completely
nonplussed, like yeah, I told you fucked up shit always happens when I sing that Bad English
song.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

SAN FRANCISCO --- The Headlands Center for the Arts is preparing for their largest fundraiser of the year set to go down on June 4th at SOMArts here in the city. Art auction, food, drinks, live music, etc and all for helping to support a great institution up in the Marin Headlands. ~details

ABOUT HEADLANDSHeadlands Center for the Arts provides an unparalleled environment for the creative process and the development of new work and ideas. Through a range of programs for artists and the public, we offer opportunities for reflection, dialogue, and exchange that build understanding and appreciation for the role of art in society.

Just want to say congrats to Fecal Face's Rachel Ralph for graduating from SFAI with her masters in curatorial studies. Also want to congratulate Alex Ziv who also just got his MFA in painting. Also a high five to the talented Mario Ayala who also just graduated from SFAI as well! --- All super talented artists (thinkers), and we're excited to see what the future holds for them!

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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